


To Rise Again

by adastra615



Category: Wolf Hall Series - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29709330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adastra615/pseuds/adastra615
Summary: Hey if you made it this far thanks for reading this meandering self indulgent fix it fic. I think its my lot in life to write better endings for morally grey English men. But really the ending to The Mirror and the Light gutted me and this was my reaction to help me move on with my life haha
Kudos: 2





	To Rise Again

As the ax falls, so too does the world around his feet. The stage where he kneels is aged and crooked under his hands. But the blow, after all, never comes. He waits for it, the screams of the crowd a living thing, rising and rising, cresting, and then building again. It's a pattern he had missed. The threat recedes, his heart tattooing heavily, as they confer above him. There is a hand on his arm, and they are telling him to rise. The command itself is lost among the crowd, the words empty and unheard, but the hand moves to his elbow, pulls, as if such a thing can be undone. And yet he finds that he cannot. That his limbs are enervated, that his leg now bent will not unbend. If he is to die, he had thought, he would kneel in such a way that no one would see his weakness, the old wound to his leg, and it must have hurt, but he can't remember. Now it protests him. 

The hand on his arm persists, tugs again, do you need assistance Lord Cromwell, he thinks he will hear next to his ear, but that doesn’t come either. In his own standing he is no longer an Earl; he is surprised he is even a Lord. Shouldn’t he be just plain Tom in this moment? He had thought to die the son of a blacksmith. Walter’s son. And then he stands, but his leg buckles and the arm of the executioner steadies him. The crowd is confused. They had come for blood. What now would they tell the ones left at home? The executioner steps back and drops the blade so that the ax cracks hard against the scaffold, and it leaves barely a dent in the wood and he can see the dull edge of it catching the sun.

And there is such relief on the face of the man he had paid only moments ago - he doesn't see his coin again. It remains in the boy's pocket and now that he has a chance to study his face, his vision wavering strangely - it seems with each beat of his heart, as if his own body will end him now - he sees the pockmarked, sweaty face of the executioner and knows how poorly it would have gone and perhaps still will because his mind nor his body will accept this new path.

He must help Christophe, but then he is moving of his own accord, he knows not how because he seems to float over the wood like one of his specters. All his ghosts are at his back, waiting for the blade to fall, to sever him from this plane and now unfulfilled they will never go again. He turns now, perhaps Anne or Thomas Moore will be there, their bodies destroyed, waiting, waiting for a thing that hasn’t come. 

What is to be done with a man spared? He does not know because there is no precedent for it, and it seems that neither are they. Do they take him to the tower, or do they let him go? Perhaps the crowd will finish him. He half suspects that they will ask him, but instead it seems he is to be put into exile. 

What do they do with a man they have made peripatetic, stripped of rank, of name?  It is an inquiry worth asking twice.  His course is as old as he is – as old as mans, the ability to survive, but he has reached an end. He thinks he is free then, severed from his obligations. Perhaps, he will go to find Jeneke, or return to Italy- with its heavier climate and the sea a different color of the one he knows here - bereft of duties and demands - to ease himself through the remaining years. He could be a better father. The thoughts are sharp as knives and they wound as he stumbles down the platform. His knee does not want to support him. He no longer has the resolve of the Stoics. The swiftness of his reprieve has robbed him of it. He feels his age in the slowness of his parry. If such a thing hasn't killed him - something else has died of his fortitude.

There is nowhere safe here, but in some manner the crowd is dispersed. He hears shouting, threats but they are incomprehensible around the noise in his head, the buzz of promised things, of nothing. The cold and the stink of the tower hit before he realizes where he is. They sit him at the base in a wicker chair and someone pushes a cup into his hands, and they ask him where he would like to go. The king has given him a pardon. What a wonderful thing that is - some sort of witchcraft one of them whispers over his head- and he closes his eyes, sags in the chair - feels small, insignificant - a thing that can be manipulated because it is not mercy he's been shown but power- he's been put in his place and it has worked. What else is there? If the king calls him back to court he knows he will go. He's a dog easily beckoned by the hand that does it harm. He thinks he’s run from it – he’d said in his ineffectual letter that the King was like a father and wasn't that the truth?

He wanders the street that night - and thinks of himself as a young boy - how he weaseled himself in to a warm place to sleep, but he doesn't want that - the exhaustion runs bone deep – but he wants to feel it - he knows when he sleeps the ax will follow him down and the sound of it. In the morning when he's walled it away - he will go and find Christophe and inquire and free him - but what power does he wield now? He thinks of Gregory. He hasn’t seen him since he was in the tower. He thinks of Jeneke and Grace and Anne and he thinks, have I been like Walter? Have I been just as poorly to them but in a different way - why could I not hold onto any of them?

Tonight, he will sit by the water. If someone takes advantage and slips a knife between his ribs, would it be right? A correction in a ledger that equals everything out. Things are not right in his mind. He has lost his equilibrium - and for one day he supposes he will allow it; he is incapable of anything else and allows his feet to lead him.

It is an exhaustion he hasn't known even at the height of b usyness . It’s hard to be a man made alive again and can he be blamed if he falters for a moment by the water, catches his reflection - he looks stark - thinner - he's shed what he gained. In so many ways he is changed.  Th e Earl of Essex, Lord Privy Seal, Crumb, Cremuel, Thomas, Tom, Craphead, hey you!, all reflect in an incomprehensible jumble, and he turns away, leans against the splintered wood of the pier. He does not know how to bring  th e day’s events under scrutiny - shouldn't such news be accompanied by rapturous relief? Anger? Rage that boils under the skin? He thinks instead in a muted fashion - I no longer have my knife - but he does not feel the defensive stature he once would have- his back turned on the desolate street. He would like to sit down and heads towards the nearest pub , t he dog's head – with a growling mongrel emblazoned on its sign. 

He's a legend of sort but a legend that is fleeting in recognition and when he looked in the water he’d seen someone else - Walter with his unshaven jaw- he would need to do something about that in the morning, but for now he sits, and puts coin on the table – it had been slipped into his pocket. Had it been there all along - a way to pay himself into a better place - it verges on heresy. Who put it there? It serves another purpose, and he feels the tension in his shoulders not relax but grow negligible. A table of inebriates demand a card game of him - he must look like an easy mark. The cards feel right under his fingers - and he turns them up one after the other to reveal his winning hand - the drinks splash onto the table, fists pound in denial, and they demand another game - another chance at satisfaction.

He sees ghosts that aren’t his. They rise on the fog above the Thames. He's a richer man now - his pockets laden with his winnings and he keeps thinking he will feel the blade across his throat. The ax had been dull. Which of his enemies had arranged that? How many strokes would it have taken? There is pain under his jaw, as if the anticipated blows have after all left a mark. He wavers then like his reflection - his limbs and thoughts loosened by the drink he'd first bought himself and then the four or so that followed, as the men lost their money to him. 

They found your boy in the Thames - the news is given to him in monotone. Someone recognizes him just to tell him this. The knife is not returned. A man from the crowd who saw the boy pulled away. There is a flicker of rage that thinks itself to ignite in his chest - he could fan it - he could bring it to life. He opens himself for attack but it never comes - he thinks now if he arms himself perhaps then it will happen. There is little left for him. Gregory hasn't spoken to him since he was incarcerated. He thinks of Christophe sleeping on the floor next to him in the tower - this boy with enough fight to live in a country that isn't his own. He thought he stood for something. He was like me. We end up dead one way or another. He must do something.  He  will seek Gregory but he cannot motivate himself in that direction.

It takes his son finding him.

Gregory, his boy, he barely recognizes him - but it is a defect of his own - because he thought he would never see him again and to have him now here proves to be unreal. He has changed in the past six months. Somehow grown taller, leaner, there is a sharp cut to him that had not been there before. Who would have tipped him off? He supposes spies are everywhere, even Henry cannot let him go so easily –Will he reconstruct The Book Called Henry? Write an ending for it? The task seems  unfathomable.  The drinks warm him - the room bright and convivial and when Gregory steps through the door he falters. He stands there - distinguished in his stance - but there are dark circles under his eyes and he's afraid that he must be the cause of them. It cannot be easy to have a father so fallen .

He turns to face him and Gregory's face is stony, but a small twitch at his cheek gives him away. He supposes it ’s  worry he tries to hide . H e finds himself at a loss for words, and he wonders if his own expression mirrors his sons. 

"Sit, Gregory,” he manages and the boy stands there a moment longer with his hand on his shoulder, his fingers squeeze, and then he pulls a chair next to him. "You look well.” Gregory does, besides for the telltale  signs of little rest. . 

“Where have you been?" his voice is low and flat - deflecting and he, Cromwell thinks he could ask the same thing of him, but chooses not to. It was best of Gregory to avoid him - to distance himself. He would have advised him to do the same thing. 

Licking my wounds, he thinks to say, but settles on "Here. Just here." And he understands for a moment that he means more - not at court - not needed by a hundred people – not demanded - but here in this pub with his head still attached to his neck.

"The king is looking for you. He has Norfolk all in a tizzy - he came to the house - banging down the door.” 

There is something fast and flittering in his chest - and for a moment the room alights - and he thinks his own body will end him anyway - but he wave of dizziness passes and he's pressed his hand hard into the wood of the table- so that splinters have dug deep under his flesh, but Gregory has a supporting hand against his shoulder and now his face is knit tightly as he thinks perhaps if he were to die now at least he had the opportunity to see his son one last time. 

"You’re not well, father."

He laughs. He laughs and covers his mouth with his hand.

He wants to speak. He wants to explain, but what? he isn't sure. Somehow explain the last six months away - account for the mistakes that led him to here – to culminate at the dogs' head, and Gregory riding gloves still on his hands, and face pink for all the time he spent trudging around London looking for his father, but he realizes he doesn’t know where to start - it’s as if he’s been reversed – come off the parapet a different man - a shadow version of what he was and he doesn't know what to say to his son. He thinks he will tell of him of his father and Gregory lays a hand on his wrist. His focus is over Gregory’s shoulder, expecting to see his old ghosts, but his eye only lands on the door. No one enters . He thinks now I can make it right. 

Gregory said he was afraid of him - how had he cultivated that in his son? He had never raised a hand, never kicked him into the cobblestones until he couldn’t breath and Gregory was very close to him now - peering at him as if he was unrecognizable. He pushes a cloth into his hand. 

“I’ve never seen you cry," Gregory says. 

He's crying? It always comes as a surprise, but he wipes dutifully under his eyes. His path had been Henry's, so impossible to cleave from - he may as well of have been the king himself- and now he has been hacked from the course he had tread so carefully ,  so rightly that his steps had been steady and always sure. It takes strength he doesn’t know he has to pull himself into the present to look at his son. "I'm okay, Gregory," he says. "I just needed time." His fantasies of living out his old age with his daughter, with his son, in a place that was all his own where he had no master but himself had always - been in the back of his mind nothing more than fancy - but they were places he could live in for the moment - he could afford himself that small escape - but the reality of if it now before him – it wouldn’t be safe for Gregory to house him - but he isn’t surprised when he asks. 

"You are pardoned though. The king wishes you no ill will anymore."

“He wanted nothing but to teach me a lesson."

"And you’ve learned it. I can see that."

"The king always did leave an impression.," he says and wonders what indeed he looks like. He runs hand over his chin and is met with stubble – grey and unbecoming, he is sure. 

"You've learned it to too well. I barely recognized yo u .”

“You wondered who that old man was lost in his drink." 

Gregory laughs, but there is sorrow in it too. He feels responsible for it. "Have they been cruel to you because of me?" 

"No nothing of the sort. We've just worried, but with the pardon you are free. Father, you don’t need to punish yourself."

Is that what this is? This fugue? He wants to see Gregory joust again. He would like to see him in good standing with the  K ing. 

"Did you hear about Christophe?" He hadn’t planned to bring him up – but something about having Gregory before him makes him want to share his grief. To see if saying it makes it seem a reality. 

Gregory's features crumple in on themselves, and he looks at the table. 

"Unfortunate." 

"Indeed." And neither of them can speak. 

“He was a good lad." He had screamed and fought and said all the things he would have said as a boy, spat it in the street , railed against the wrong that was done him - where had that gone - didn't life just razor it all away? A good lad, language lacked the ability to express - an amalgamation of his own childhood - images that words cannot substitute for - miscommunication has gotten him where he is. 

Christophe with his knife. Hadn't he seen the fire in him - hadn't he seen something of his old self and had hoped that that at least that could be preserved - his knife tucked away under his jerkin - a world he thought the boy could try and conquer- rise like he did - and then he thought of his small body somewhere in a ditch in London - and he had to press the cloth once again against his eyes.

"You need sleep father and a warm place to do it in. Come back with me tonight." And he finds he can't refuse him even though he wishes. He thinks he will tell him everything. Shadows chase their feet. The cobblestones sound as if they will come apart, and he wonders if the ground will split in front of him. Gregory is asking him the last time he slept. Sometime before Henry he hears himself respond. He wonders briefly if Gregory is a ghost, or perhaps he is now haunting his son, like his father haunts him. He wonders if these thoughts will be with him in the morning , if they will follow him now like footfalls forever at his back. He used to think he would die at his desk, tallying figures, now he can't even imagine.

The blade flashes and catches more than the sun, it reflects a lifetime of events in its metal head, they play for him like children in a field. His vision is tilted upwards, somehow away from the crowd, but turned towards the executioner. He thinks there is no dignity in this act. He thinks of Anne. “I have but little neck," and now she stands beside him, runs a hand across his arm. "Why were you spared?" she asks him and walks around until she is kneeling in front of him, her hand seeming to burn through the cloth of his coat. An old man who wrought so much destruction, but you don’t see it that way, do you?" She stands and a gold pin in her hair catches the sun. The ax has vanished.  “ Do you know that you're still alive when the ax severs your head? That the world turns this way and that, but you can’t speak, and you can't breathe, and you can only look until it all fades into nothing, but you can hear and they scream and they’re so glad you’re gone." 

He wakes then. Gregory is gone, his bed made, but there is evidence of him still, his traveling sack leant against the foot of the bed.

He still carries the Hebrew book with him and he pulls it free. They had allowed him to take what was his from the tower- would they have parsed it out among themselves. He's never thought of the sad relics left behind - where do they go - into the street? To the gaolers? He clutches the book tighter- he still doesn't think of himself as alive - that such a small task should elicit emotion of turning and opening a book and looking through the tr ail ing words and lines of text - distracted so that the words do not make sense - it had be en  a way to pass the time - he hadn't taken it seriously enough. He can learn Arabic now he thinks - he thinks of all the potential of knowledge that is ahead of him - that he had lost forever - now that he has some semblance of freedom, yet his mind will not allow him that, it insists that he is still at the beck and call of someone else - it is ingrained - at his core - it has grown only outwards form there , become entrenched .  Too hack oneself free like an ax against a tree trunk will only serve to kill the tree itself.  All that’s left is to grow outward and expand around the interior - hope for clarity in distance 

A purpose is what he needs, and yet he finds none. He pulls up a chair to the table close s t to the window and leans over the work . H is back aches form the time spent in the tower ,  sleeping in the an alley contending with fate to see if someone would strike him down- it did not happen and he supposes it is a sign that he should continue. There is sti ll so much.

In his life he has climbed to the peak and fallen into the deepest abyss and now he crawls out, places a foot on the ground. He will not climb again - fifty years of it was too much; he will settle, he will settle and be glad of it - but there is still a feeling that plumbs deep and lives behind his heart and it will be hard to push down impulses that tell him to move- they may be fettered but if given enough time they will break free. 

The sun splays across the table and he turns the pages- loses himself for a moment in a tongue that isn’t his own but feels familiar in  its ability transport him - to make him something new.  There is a vague feeling that he could flame into something real; that Henry had wronged him - that after all these years of service that he was the one beaten down for a mistake made somewhere in a painting - Henry had wanted to be unhappy and therefore had been so. Is he happy now? Are Uncle Norfolk and the emperor worming their way in - would the whole country be restructured?

The king had wanted to see him. Gregory’s words that had elicited a near syncope had after that barely registered; His body flowing across the cobblestones to the night’s lodgings without any authority of his own. Is that what it is to be a ghost? To be borne along behind. A man without a purpose was hardly a man. 

A purpose can be ones own he supposes. After so many years of serving an idea - something greater than himself - to reduce this labor seems selfish, egotistical and he isn't sure what the first step is. 

Gregory comes back them. “I was able to get you a horse. I thought we could ride back home tonight - it will do you good to get out of the city." He wonders if he will ever come back. Everything seems momentous almost insurmountable and he doesn't know if he has the ability to turn anymore to look behind him - he thinks the only way to avoid the things haunting him is to keep his head forward, his intentions simple and defined clearly towards the present. Henry had humbled him - he wants to think nothing of the future - because it still does not seem a promised thing. Why he ever thought that he does not know. This is not a world with promised days. He supposes it will be a simpler one. How does one live out days unexpected. He moves forward. One step. One step. 

His grandson, Henry ducks behind his mother's dress and peers out at them as they arrive - the horse’s hooves unsteady against the rocky soil. His head is buzzing from no sleep, from the ideas that continue to chase like dogs snapping at heels – it’s as if approaching a painting: bucolic and inaccessible - if one could only step forward and make it real. He has no option in the matter - the horse continues to plod forward.

Elizabeth smiles - beams, her whole face caught in the light at the sight of him. "We're so glad to see you," she says. 

Henry is much bigger than he remembers. Almost nine months. He had been swaddled and wrapped - a little wrinkled face peering up at him through the linen - eyes blue and clear. He sees bit of Anne and Grace and Gregory in the set of his features. Now he stands next to his mother, holding himself up - gurgling a string of incoherent words. He wonders if he should reach out and swoop him up. The boy may cry. 

Elizbeth bends down and takes him in her arms. "This is your grandfather. You remember your grandfather ,  Henry. It's been much too long. " She ushers them both in and seats him near the empty fireplace. Dried flowers are hooked to the mantle, and light streams through the window.

But he feels restless. He looks around the house for something to occupy himself with - but it’s clear that he will not be allowed that his night - the table is being laid for supper- a feast emerges - roast chicken, potatoes, wine brought up form the cellar - vegetables form the garden, freshly baked bread, pheasant - perhaps Gregory shot them. Gregory looks leaner and he notes a bit of gray around his temple, not even thirty and already going gray. 

"What army are we feeding?" 

“The one that will put in back where you belong." That if there’s any time to celebrate that it’s now - what strain has his fall put on them?

No men appear at the beck and call of his son with halberds and swords ready to hack their way into Henry’s fortress. Instead they insist that he sit at the head of the table. It feels a stage for a play - and he finds his words stilted. Horridly, he would like to retreat into a room - how easily he had grown to the tower - the solitude - his chance to look at his books - he's become old and distanced. What did Gregory see in him to stop him from giving more details on the King’s summons? He should ask - prepare himself for it - but for the moment he finds he doesn’t want to know. 

After the feast they insist that he sits in the most comfortable chair by the fire. He must truly look unwell. Gregory sits across him and studies his own feet as if stewing over a question he can't bring himself to ask - he can guess at it - he wouldn't have visited his father either . Does he still fear him? Perhaps he can be better now - he can be here for Henry and Gregory and Elizabeth - Rafe - if only he could have saved Christophe - it causes that familiar sensation: a clasping behind his heart - that he had pushed away so along ago after the death of Lizzy and Grace and Anne - that now seems heavy almost painful \- perhaps his real end will come from this feeling. 

Henry toddles around the tables and  sit s on the floor next to Gregory’s greyhound, who gnaws on one of the bones form the table - the room is still permeated with the smell of cooked meat -  of wine - of some residual spice he can't put a name to  - and he drifts for  i n between here and his si ster’s  house -  on the floor like Henry \- holding a bone out to one of the dog's now nameless but certainly must have belonged to one them. 

He was older than Henry then - maybe three at the time and the dog snarled around the bone and looked at him with upturned watery eyes - and he’d seen a reflection of himself looking back, and then Walter’s footsteps behind him, being yanked to his feet. "You want to be low like that? As low as that dog - that's what you'll be.” And he shoved him hard enough that he fell back and the dog yelped as Walter pulled the bone out of it’s mouth and throh it out into the street.

How is one to escape memories that rise to the surface unbidden? Henry pulls at his leg and he looks down - a half toothed grin meets him. He wobbles precariously. He, Cromwell reaches out a steadying hand to keep the boy from toppling over. Henry’s hand lands on the snout of the dog and the dog turns looks at him, lets him use it to steady himself. He is transfixed by this image- how the boy teeters and wobbles, but maintains his footing. Henry reaches up then, he catches the boy under the arms and pulls him up onto his lap. 

"He likes you," Elizabeth says from the corner and somehow he had been unaware of her presence. He's let his vigilance go. When will these things come back? Things that had seemed so integral to his being now vanished. He is a man undone.

And if he isn't that man anymore, who is he?

Henry looks up at him - the name he thinks given in reverence - in concord - is like a wound  to something vital \- but the child deserves none of that, and he turns him, bounces him on his knee - he lets out small squeal of delight and hooks his fingers around his grandfather’s hand. 

"What will you do now father?" Gregory asks him. They are outside in the heath, Henry wandering in front of them - reaching out to grasp the wheat - to almost topple forward before Gregory rights him as he reaches for a toad that has hopped in his path. The answer eludes him. He will take a moment to walk here with his son and grandson - he thinks the call from Henry will come and he will return to court - but that moment seems both impossible and just around the hour. For now he will savor the light that casts down through the tress - in such a day that is unknown to England - and the susurrus of the wind, and the crouched form of his grandson in the soil - grasping the dirt and turning to show him what he's found. To delight in something little that has no name or ledger.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey if you made it this far thanks for reading this meandering self indulgent fix it fic. I think its my lot in life to write better endings for morally grey English men. But really the ending to The Mirror and the Light gutted me and this was my reaction to help me move on with my life haha


End file.
